


Heritage

by Arowen12



Series: Blood of the Covenant [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Badass Gertrude Robinson, Beholding, Gen, Gertrude has a kid, Manipulation, Unhealthy Relationships, but they care, that kid is John
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24238726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arowen12/pseuds/Arowen12
Summary: Gertrude Robinson has a one night stand. Nine-months later she has a son, she names him Jonathan and writes Simms on the birth certificate.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Gertrude Robinson
Series: Blood of the Covenant [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1750216
Comments: 33
Kudos: 384





	Heritage

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone, I couldn't get this idea out of my head and just had to explore it so I hope you all enjoy. Some of the timeline stuff might be a bit iffy but I tried to stay as close to canon as possible. Anyways, read on and enjoy!

Gertrude Robinson has a one-night stand. To say this is unusual would be a mild understatement when Gertrude started working at the Magnus Institute in the tender youth of her twenties, she already comported herself with the decorum of a senior citizen rocking on their porch and yelling at children to get off their lawn. She had been told by every adult in her life that she was an ‘old soul’. It might once have been a point of pride, but no longer.

To summarize, at the age of somewhere between forty and fifty and looking like she’s sixty, tired and drifting towards her apartment she sees a bar. Gertrude Robinson has a one-night stand with a man, at some dingy bar on piss-poor beer, because she has read too many statements and they have read her.

The man is clumsy if handsome enough with dark skin, dark eyes, and a dash of salt and pepper to his hair. She doesn’t normally go for men when she goes out at all. Still, she lets him lead her to his apartment and onto his bed with soft sheets, and many years after she will still remember the faint scent of laundry detergent and an abundance of incense.

She forgets about the night, about the man with dark eyes, about the faint hangover as she slips carefully out of the apartment and fixes her cardigan around her shoulders; it wouldn’t do to seem anything but presentable.

Gertrude Robinson has the first inkling that something might be wrong a month later when she reads a statement on the Darkness and proceeds to throw-up, it wasn’t even the flesh which is unsettling on the best of days. She brushes it aside, perhaps… Perhaps something she ate the night before.

Except, it keeps happening along with a few other incriminating clues. Gertrude Robinson has always been observant, possessed of a quick mind, and the will to do _whatever it takes_. And yet. Gertrude knows what she should do, knows enough that having a child, raising a child, as The Archivist is dangerous. Dangerous is an understatement, it’s absolutely, positively foolish.

Gertrude has never been a foolish woman and yet. She can’t help but glance down at her stomach when she is sitting at her desk reading over a statement, she cannot help but wonder what it might be to have a child. To say that Gertrude Robinson is emotionless, or that she didn’t care about those around her is only partially true, she is after all still rather human for the given value of the word.

It’s stupid. So stupid. But she decides to keep the child.

And that means complications of a different kind. The thing is no one can _Know_ about the child, not any Fears, not Elias, or any of the numerous enemies she has made over the course of her life.

So, she makes a deal. Specifically, she makes a deal with the Eye, she brings a tape recorder home tugging it in her bag as Michael fumbles with his own case, such a sweet boy, so naïve. Gertrude Robinson waits until it is dark and she makes a deal, the child will be bound to the Eye and in exchange, no one will _Know_ (technically that is the domain of the Stranger, the Unknown, but well the absence of Knowledge has its own merits).

For the next few months, she wears jumpers, cardigans, and knit sweaters that are a few sizes too large sends Michael, or Eric, or Emma out on cases with the excuse that she is working on a large project (her feet ache and she’s not quite in the right shape to run properly). She doesn’t make a list of possible baby names or pick out striped or dotted jumpers. Gertrude does, however, read about the possible complications of her age and other distinct possibilities (there is only one statement from a woman who was pregnant when the incident occurred).

A few weeks before she is due, she sends a budget plan to Elias for a trip to South Africa with something about a possible ritual for the Corruption. It is summarily approved without Gertrude needing to even interact with the man, which is, of course, a bonus. Michael throws her his best set of puppy eyes when she says she is going alone, Eric narrows his eyes at her, his wife is pregnant from what Gertrude has heard.

Then she travels as far from London as she can, places her trust in a few contacts, and waits.

Childbirth is a different sort of pain. Gertrude has been shot, burned, almost skinned once, but still, it is an entirely different sort of pain. She doesn’t snap at the nurses and doctors though it is a close thing, a very close thing indeed.

After a nurse places the child, a boy, in her arms, he takes after the father and for that Gertrude is relieved to the quick, dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes, the baby gurgles up at her, innocent so innocent, not even knowing fear and Gertrude strokes her finger gently over the baby’s downy hair. There is a slight bump in the centre of his forehead and Gertrude rubs her finger over it gently with a hum.

A third eye opens, staring up at her, through her, into her, before it blinks and is gone again.

She names the child Jonathan after her grandfather and the name Simms sits at the end of the birth certificate.

The Archive assistants cluster around her like ducklings when she returns murmuring about sickness, concern, and statements. It is strange, she has distanced herself from them, has always likened herself to stone unyielding, unbreaking, but perhaps having a child has made her soft. She doesn’t show it of course.

Just listens to Eric talk about his son Gerard, or Michael about the strange shape of the Archives. She ignores any future questions about spending more time at home with excuses of bringing the statements there and then back; it is mostly true.

Jonathan is a precocious child, curious, of course, and he devours every scrap of knowledge in sight. That being said he is also remarkably picky about what he will and won’t devour. As a toddler, he asks her question after question more so than any parenting manual might expect. She answers them, whether through the power of the internet or by placing a book in front of him. He learns to read quickly, too quickly, talking follows in the same vein.

Gertrude Robinson does not spend many hours at the small flat she owns with Jon; she sends him to school and listens to the teacher’s glowing praise of his vocabulary and often leaves the child to his own devices with a stack of thick books. She _never_ brings him to the Institute.

Jon is a curious child and perhaps she should have expected the question, “What do you do Gran?”

She may have told the child that she is his grandmother for his own sake. Gertrude has expected the question for quite some time, what she doesn’t quite expect is the Compulsion behind it as she replies, “I’m the Archivist for the Magnus Institute.”

Jon nods and wanders off to watch the latest documentary on the television, one on the deepest parts of the sea if she is correct. For a long time, Gertrude sits in her chair in the kitchen and watches her child.

Around the time Jon is seven or eight, she doesn’t keep track or really celebrate birthdays, his hunger for knowledge becomes near insatiable. With a grumble, Gertrude goes to cheap second-hand shops and anything below a certain amount she tips into the basket. Jon grins, it is a toothy, hungry, sort of grin and flips through the stack with glee.

After one such trip, Jon pauses fingers hovering over a thin book, Gertrude doesn’t notice, it might be rude but not holy incorrect so say she doesn’t care, distracted as she is by the recent possibility of another Ritual. She has already dealt with Agnes and The Cult of the Lightless Flame.

Gertrude only notices when Jonathan slips back inside shaking and pale as a sheet, she asks, “What happened?”

He tells her, has never been able to lie to her and Gertrude can’t find it in herself to regret it. She has never been one for physical affection but she tucks her son against her side, smoothes her hand through his dark hair. Her memories of his father are vague but she _Knows_ he looks like him (at night she wonders if the man was affiliated with any of the Fears).

“What happened?” Jon asks back and Gertrude tells him, about the Fears, about the Rituals, her fears about Elias Bouchard. When she is done, a tape recorder clicks off somewhere in the distance and the third eye in the centre of Jon’s forehead stares back at her, unblinking, Jon nods and goes to his room.

Gertrude doesn’t hesitate to distance herself, more than she already has, from her son, a part of her is _afraid._ Of what the boy knows, can know, has he already started to seek statements? Will he endanger himself? Has he already _Become_ something she swore to avoid?

The Web has already touched him, and she fears what else. When he asks though, she brings statements and reads them to him each night, just one, before bed. She can’t shake the feeling that she has lost a battle; one she didn’t know she was fighting.

But for the most part, John is if not a normal child, then he is still a child.

He grows up, attends University and she pretends at surprise when he studies the Esoteric along with a whole host of other things the Institute likes to gobble up. They sit at the table in the living room, he is staring at her almost fond but not quite, she is the same. They talk, he asks about Agnes (dead, she felt it), about Eric (gone), Emma (gone). He tells her about his little band, about a girlfriend, Georgie, who’s been touched by the End.

They pretend at family but Gertrude doesn’t mind, doesn’t think she’s ever been good at anything but pretending, pretending to be strong, to be brave, to be emotionless. It has served her well and will continue to serve her.

Jon laughs, it is a hollow sort of laugh and states, “I told my friends that you died, peacefully in your sleep.”

“That would be nice,” Gertrude replies with a shake of her head and they sip at lukewarm tea across the table.

“I should introduce you to Gerry, I think you’ll like him,” the words slip out, it is a very careful slip, but a slip nonetheless. She thinks Jon would like Gerry, they both dress in far too much black and she has heard what Jon listens to when in a fit.

Gerry studies her suspiciously when she leads him to her flat. It is strange how a place is different through the presence of someone else, she can see the stacks of books piled everywhere, Jon’s and hers, empty mugs of tea, a board with strings connecting a few different ideas.

Jon stumbles out of his room rubbing at his where his third eye is, he blinks at Gerry, Gerry blinks back and says, “Nice shirt, listened to the fourth album yet?”

“Yeah,” Jon replies with a grin glancing down at his shirt, Gertrude only then really notices the skeleton marching across the front. She leaves the two of them in a living room and listens as they talk until she unearths an unread statement about Jonah Magnus. She doesn’t hear them talk about their mothers or see the way Gerry presses his knee gently to Jon’s both of them _Knowing_ each other.

Jon finishes University and settles across from her, tells her he is going to work at the Magnus Institute, he doesn’t ask, just tells her, his hands clasped in front of him on the table. She presses her lips together and nods, says quietly, “Be careful of Elias Bouchard, Jon.”

He nods and the next day he is working in research. Gertrude stares at the empty Archives, the shelves a dissonant mess of Statements true and false, of the spider webs in the corner, watching, waiting. She calls Salesa and inquires about explosives.

When the Dark’s Ritual begins Gertrude unearths a tape recorder, a part of her wonders if they’re for Jon or her. She speaks of Jonah Magnus who wears Elias Bouchard’s face, of the Rituals (they don’t actually need to be stopped), of her suspicions regarding what Magnus wants when the door creaks open and the man himself steps inside, the matchbox in her hands is heavy as if the bullet that tears through her chest.

Her last thought isn’t of Jon, she has already dedicated her last words to him, though not quite so obviously. Instead, she allows herself to stop pretending, to finally be afraid, for herself, but also for Jon.

Gertrude Robinson dies. But her son, he lives.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading! I'll probably just leave this as a one-shot for now but I might eventually write a proper sequel exploring the AU *shrug*. Comments are always super appreciated thanks!


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